i went in to a cells at work thread on 4chan’s /a/ because i can’t help but immerse myself in sludge and the whole thread was anons talking about how they’ve been eating better and drinking more water because they want the anime girls that live inside of them to be happier
shinzo abe you son of a bitch, you did it.
cells at work is an anime about anthropomorphic cells living in a human body, depicted as a large city
otaku on 4chan watched the show and, in a desire to make the cells in their bodies happy, have started to live healthier lives
shinzo abe, the prime minister of japan and noted son of a bitch, actually managed to get anime viewers to start taking care of themselves through anime
Mission accomplished, now fuck already.
baby steps, mister prime minister.
i can’t believe there’s an anime adaptation of osmosis jones
all books are good books. you are not a “lesser reader” if you only read manga or comic books or a “better reader” for reading academic heavy texts.
reading is reading no matter what it is, be it a graphic novel, a romance, a classic, an audiobook, a picture book, a cookbook, fanfiction, fucking whatever, read what makes you happy
reading is supposed to be fun and don’t let elitism sap any joy out of it
That’s actually why I made this post. My sister was staying at her bf’s house last year and they woke up at 3am and the house was on fire. They fled immediately and by that afternoon it had burned to the ground. He lost everything in that fire. Entire neighborhoods of my hometown burned completely to the ground last year.
And it’s not even like rural land it was like the SUBURBS.
This was my hometown last year. Because of wildfires started by lazy disgusting selfish people like the ones who throw cigarette butts out their windows.
This year again there are wildfires in California and you know damn well almost all these fires start by cigarette butts dropped by some lowlife piece of shit. My aunt posted yesterday that they had to evacuate and my dad posted pictures of smoke billowing that can be seen from his house.
That is SMOKE not clouds. SMOKE.
This is Lake County California this year once again most likely because you selfish fuckwits can’t dispose of your butts properly like a half decent human being.
If you throw cigarette butts on the ground I fucking hate you and you are selfish garbage and I hope you get COPD.
Fuck you.
Dude I’m so glad you posted this because I FUCKING HATE IT when people just casually toss cigarette butts out of car windows or on the ground I have like wanted to call the fucking police on people who have thrown burning butts out of the car in front of me because it is SO FUCKING DANGEROUS but nobody else seems to care except me so i am SO GLAD to see other people as pissed off about this shit as I always am
My blood fucking BOILS when people throw cigarette butts out their car window. You have no idea. It’s so fucking disgusting and selfish. Anyone who throws cigarette butts out the window is a filthy lowlife loser.
As someone who lives in a mountainous area, I cannot agree with this post enough. It should be common sense for people to be more careful with disposing of their cigarette butts, ESPECIALLY in areas that are naturally hot/dry. We have fires in my city multiple times every damn year because people like this would rather have the convenience of using the road as their ashtray than just not smoking while driving or getting a proper in-vehicle disposal.
This may i was literally evacuated from my home as wildfires raged throughout nw oklahoma. Hundreds of people lost their homes, thousands of cattle burned alive and there has been no official count on how many wildlife died. Do you know how fucking terrifying it is to see a bobcat, burnt to death in a tree cause it had no where else to go?
My math teacher had to euthanize many of his cattle because they were burnt so bad their skin was sloughing off. My town was without power for a week, and water for a month and a half… and get this, WE WERE THE LUCKY ONES. 3 entire towns got wiped off the map, half of one burned completely to the ground, and because we lived in a rural area there was zero news coverage, we didnt know if it was safe to go home or even if our town was still there. I will NEVER forget the gigantic walls of fire surrounding our house, or the stories my classmates had to tell when class resumed two weeks later. One classmate had been up day and night hosing down his house because the fire dept, already way too small to handle this massive fire, couldnt make their way to his house because they were in the middle of keeping a chemical plant from catching fire and rendering the entire 200 mile radius uninhabitable. Another had been stranded by a pond for a week while the fires raged around them. those are only a fraction of the stories.
DONT THROW YOUR FUCKING CIGARETTE BUTTS OUT THE WINDOW YOU PRICKS
Don’t throw your butts out, but the Lake County Fire was started by a faulty electrical fence unit and the Carr fire by a tire blowing out, the rim scraping the road and sending sparks out. Arcs in power lines cause the Santa Rosa fire of the first picture. Another by a blown transformer. One by a tree falling on power lines.
The Oklahoma fires were cause by again, power lines.
This is not an issue of individual people and individual actions. This state is a tinder box, a result of years of drought, bad drought, climate change, forestry management of some question, failing infrastructure, systemic underfunding, corruption, cutting of firefighting funds, and fucking PG&E not doing its job. Almost all of 2017′s CA wildfires were caused by failures in power lines and PG&E not following state law for power line safety.
This goes for Australia too! ALL of Australia. DONOT FUCKING THROW YOUR CIGARETTES ON THE GROUND ANYWHERE. THERE ARE EUCALYPTS EVERYWHERE. EVERYTHING IS FUCKING FLAMMABLE. DON’T FUCKING DO IT YOU PIECE OF SHIT.
you know those posts that are like, “remember when we used to read books and now we all have no attention span because of the internet.” then there’s the very contrived advice that’s like, “if you want to be a writer you have to read”??
well i think they’re completely true but they also really suck, and we of the youngish adult writers of 2018 have it pretty hard, especially those of us in fandom who enjoy reading fanfic more than original fic because it’s mostly tagged properly and possesses the emotional catharsis we’re looking for, pretty much guaranteed.
that said, i think it’s really important – whether you write fanfic, ofic, or both – to read traditionally published work, in part because it can help better inform your fanfic, but also because it will help develop your writing overall. and if you’re interested in ofic, it’s pretty much a necessity to read.
so, i just graduated from an MFA program in creative writing, and contrary to popular opinion, the MFA does not actually teach you how to write. it gives you space to write, and mostly, it teaches you how to read as a writer.
so here is everything i’ve learned about reading as a writer over the past two years:
you do not have to read anything you don’t want to read
part of the problem with “read everything you can!” advice is that there is a lot of stuff out there, and a ton of it doesn’t jive with your interests. moreover, there’s a kind of pressure to read the Classics just to say you’ve read them when in fact a lot of them are boring, irrelevant, and dare i say overrated. so here is me giving you permission: you don’t have to pick up Hemingway or Faulkner or whoever else to be a good writer. life is too short to force yourself to read dead white dudes.
if a book doesn’t grab you by the first 10%, put it down
this is what has helped me more than anything else as a reader, because i found i would commit myself to a boring book and then never want to read it, so i would stop reading for months at a time. so, when you pick out a book, go to the last page and check the number. promise yourself you’ll read 10% of the book. 400 pages? read to page 40 and ask yourself, “do i really want to turn the page? if i put this book down, would i want to pick it back up again later?” if the answer is no, return it to the library or wherever you got it. try the next book in your pile. your TBR list is long; be merciless.
but if you want to make it look like you read the book…
commit to 25%. then go to the wikipedia article, read the plot summary, and fast forward to the last 10-15 pages. bam. you’ve more or less read the book. bonus points if you watch the movie, too. so if you’re really committed to reading Ulysses or whatever but you don’t want to slog through it, you can digest enough to be able to hold a conversation about it in a few hours and move on with your life. you can even pretend you enjoyed it and found it a formative reading experience that helped shape your understanding of the work of fiction, really, absolutely groundbreaking, etc etc. this is especially helpful if you find yourself anywhere in the literary sphere because other writers will expect you to be familiar with the canon.
read selfishly and take tools from everything you read
when you read anything, even the stuff you don’t like, ask yourself, “what tools can i take for my own writing?” let’s say you really love the plot structure – write it down somewhere so you remember to try it out for your own story. if you love the lyricism of the sentences, find a few sentences you really like and jot them down by hand, inspect what about them makes you love them so much. steal aspects of characters you admire, pacing, conflict, stakes. steal as much as you can without stealing the words themselves. you can even use this for things you don’t like by rephrasing the question: “what is it about this story i would like to avoid in my own work?” pivot every single thing you read to be about you and your writing. take notes. mark up and highlight your book if you have to. reading as a writer is not a passive activity but an active one. you’re not being entertained, you’re learning. so let published works teach you.
carve time out of your day to read
at 7pm every day, i put my phone down and pick up an actual physical book. this is my personal preference – i have no beef at all with ebooks, but honestly, i get so tired of staring at lit screens all day, and paper books without the distraction of my phone is such a nostalgic feeling for me, back when i was 14 and the library was my second home and if someone wanted my attention they had to call me on a landline. if you had the same upbringing, dedicating some time to read a physical book will do you wonders. if ebooks are your thing, it’s still important to schedule reading time for yourself, not as an obligation to uphold, but as something to do that’s good for you and that you enjoy.
write letters to your favorite authors!!
seriously. if you love a book, let the author know. they will not be annoyed or upset. they will be thrilled. it’s a good way to network with other writers, and it’s a great practice of literary citizenship.
when someone recommends a book to you, ask why
this is something i’ve only recently learned to do, as someone who gets book recommendations pretty much constantly. if the person knows you decently, i don’t think it’s out of line to ask, “what would i specifically like about this?” because then that will tell if you if the person is only recommending it because they like it, not because they think you’ll like it. if the person knows your writing, it’s fair to ask, “how is this book in conversation with my work?” so you have a head start in the kinds of tools you’ll want to take from it.
follow your aesthetic instincts
as a writer, honing your aesthetic will always be one of your highest aims, which means constantly seeking out writers whose aesthetics you admire and analyzing what it is you admire about it. “aesthetic” is kind of a vague term, but it refers to your overall vibe – the things you write about and why you write about them. my aesthetic is more or less “midwestern class warfare meets sexual identity crises with a lot of dark humor,” so i tend to look for other writers who share facets of that aesthetic and i inspect what’s working for them, where they publish, what their influences are, etc. i try to read both within my aesthetic but also far outside of it too. for example, i love historical fiction but i know i’ll never, ever write it. but i appreciate the aesthetic, and i can take tools from it like dedication to detail, internal conflicts, etc.
read short fiction (please)
this is my personal plea. short stories are a great way to find authors whose work is in conversation with yours, so that you can then go check out their novels with a good idea already of what you like about them. short stories are all over the internet via literary and genre mags. they’re a much smaller commitment than novels and tend to have just as much emotional impact (if done well) as novels. more importantly you’ll always have recs for your friends, and it’s a lot easier getting someone to read a 6k story you enjoyed than a 60k novel.
resources
don’t have time to read but like to listen? try the new yorker fiction and writers’ voice podcasts
like marking up books but don’t want to buy them new? check out thriftbooks (my favorite site on the internet – the link here will get you 15% off!)
want to stay apprised of the goings on in the modern literary community? subscribe to the lithub newsletter and arts & letters daily, two newsletters i’ve been subscribed to for years
as always i’m glad to answer any questions! happy reading!
sky's stuff 